Meet the Pressure
by NorthernTrash-x
Summary: Zoro/Sanji. In the underbelly of the ship, they burned.


Sanji x Zolo

**Meet the Pressure**

_Live, I wanna live on fire;_  
_Die, I wanna burn out brighter_  
_Brighter than the northern lights_  
Anberlin

Now, it happened with a well-practised haste.

They moved quickly in the darkness, hands touching and stroking and digging in, the pair of them desperate and rough and all-consumed with the sheer need of it all. Their kisses were deep and long and filled with teeth and tongue and the rasp of stubble, and they moved against each other forcefully and hurried, because time was precious, and not to be wasted on words, when actions spoke so much more anyway.

No quarter was given.

They bit down cries and moans and noises of surrender or endurance, sounds of pleasure and pain and ecstasy, and moved together in silence, aware that they might be heard from above, all too well aware what might happen if they were caught. Small sounds escaped, softer that one might expect from their frenzied bodies, but were quickly kissed away by the others' mouth.

It was last man standing and neither one of them were willing to give first, both of them too proud to do so, or perhaps just too used to the long-standing rivalry between them. It was an inevitability that one of them had to give, but in the hot and heavy aftermath, neither could remember who had won that day anyway.

And although they both knew that they only had little time to spend, if they wished to remain undiscovered, they did not rise immediately. They could escape for maybe forty minutes, and hour on a good day, before one or another of the crew members noticed them gone, and the seconds were ticking by. They were rushed, perhaps, but deep down in the underbelly of the ship, they could find some kind of wordless peace, with the slap of water against the hull and the faint sound of footsteps from above the only accompaniment to their laboured breathing.

And there, in the darkness, they lay.

They could feel the hardness of the boards on their backs and the cool of the insetting evening in their bones and they could hear the whisper of the sea, as if it were urging them to move, before they were caught.

And some days they did leave straight away, without a word to each other but with a passing look as Sanji- who always left first, as he was missed first in the kitchen- turned his head at the base of the laddered stairs and looked, with a meaning that neither of them could explain, at Zoro, until he turned to leave.

But other days they stayed a little longer, and spoke in quiet bickering whispers, and lay together on the floor, in a nest of the clothes that they had shed so quickly. Sanji would light a smoke and Zoro would lean a little closer to it, to taste the taste of Sanji on the air that he was breathing.

Intoxicating.

And whilst they never spoke of a future, never even spoke of a next time, it was always a silent, incommunicable fact that there would be.

They had a series of codes for it now. If Zoro sat opposite him at the table for lunch, then Sanji knew that as soon as he had finished washing up he would slip away, and find the other waiting. If Sanji knocked his foot against Zoro's shin as he was walking past, then Zoro would wait an hour, and follow. If Zoro wore his shirt to the breakfast table, then it was a no, and if Sanji bought honeydew melons, instead of watermelons… then Zoro knew he was watching too closely, and would not meet the other man's eyes, in case anyone noticed.

Time after time, they found themselves back there. They still fought and bickered even when they were together, just under their breath, and there had been occasions where one of them had walked out, sick to death of the other. Then followed, at the most, three days of silence before, once more, a tiny nod of the head, a sign that you would not notice if you were not looking for it, and it began again.

They could not risk meeting too often, of course, but perhaps the fact that they could only meet once, or maybe twice a week made everything more intense, more passionate. Perhaps it was that, too, that made them try, at least, to get along with each other, because wasted moments were never to be recovered, and when you can only feel like that once a week, to throw it away over an off-hand remark was foolish.

And that feeling?

Ah, that feeling.

It was like they were set on fire.

The first time, when Sanji's clothes had been pulled off him, he felt like his skin had been pulled off too, like there was nothing left of him but the core of what he was, and those hands and that mouth felt like they were touching an open wound, like they were drawing his blood with each light stroke and each pressing caress, like Zoro was ripping him open and he was _enjoying_ it. When he had first slid into the blond underneath him, nails on his back and mouth on his neck, his vision blurred and he bit the inside of his mouth so hard that the next few kisses he had laid on Sanji's shoulder were traced with blood. If felt like he had stopped breathing, like his heart had stopped moving and all that was left was that connection between their bodies, that point of heat, of pressure, of dread, of wonder.

And _that_ was why they came back, week after week, month after month, until eventually it was a year and both of them knew it and neither of them wanted to bring it up because a part of both of them was scared, just a little bit scared, of doing anything that might end that heat, that pressure, that dread, that wonder; all of those exhilarating feelings that lay down with them and wound their way into their subconscious until it became a real, an _important_, part of their lives.

Because nothing matched up to it.

Nothing.

Sanji didn't mention that sex in port towns had become so worthless that now he did not bother, and Zoro didn't mention that when he sometimes dreamed of their encounters they were so vivid that he woke with damp cheeks, and neither of them ever, ever spoke of the nights when one of them was on watch duty and the other climbed up to join them, those nights when their unions were watched only by the indifferent moon.

Neither of them spoke of the changes in their hearts and heads, and when they fought against whoever it was that they had pissed off that week, they fought just as well as ever, if not better, but could not stop themselves from looking around in the middle, because although they believed in each other's strength, there was always the fear, always the worry, always the _just in case._

As soon as they saw the other they could relax again, for things would go on, but part of both of them knew that if it were they who fell, distracted by watching out for the other or just because of bad luck, then they would die with no regrets.

They had burned, and they had met their pressure, and they would die knowing that there would be nothing greater left in their lives than those shady meetings, hidden away from prying eyes. They would die knowing that they had felt, that they had really and truly _felt_, more so than they could have believed, and with that, they would have died happy, burning out with the memory of brightness.

Neither of them ever thought about what they would do if it were they who were left behind.

They did not want to think about that.

And so they lay their in the dusty silence and both of them pretended not to notice that they lay closer to each other than before, and that they stayed longer, now, than when they had first began this strange, unending journey. They lay together with their eyes open, wordlessly watching each other, only hearing their panting breath, the slap of the water against the hull, the echo of soft footsteps from far above, and the sound of their hearts beating, as if in unison.


End file.
